[Noisebridge-discuss] Use of Nitrous Oxide in the space on Sunday night

[Taylor Alexander]

I thought the assertion that NB is an anarchist space to be a bit
interesting. There may be many people at NB who identify with anarchist
ideals, but as a legal non-profit operating in San Francisco, it's simply
not possible for NoiseBridge, as an organization, to be anarchist. NB has
to comply with building codes, fire laws, local ordinances (one of those
covers smoking on the fire escape, which is a defined no-no from the
chatter I've followed on the list), zoning laws (sleeping in the space, a
definite no-no), etc.

Noisebridge members may prefer to follow certain anarchist ideals, but the
organization cannot actually be truly anarchist without quickly getting
booted from SF.

I'm all for reasonable illegal drug use and I personally wouldn't be
bothered if people did them in the space (I like N2O myself), but simply
saying NB is an anarchist organization and therefore doesn't need to follow
the laws is ignoring all of the laws noisebridge DOES choose to follow as
an organization, like the aforementioned sleeping in the space and smoking
on the fire escape.

As for whether or not some people doing whippets really needs an official
decision from the group, I have no idea. I'm not a regular so I'm not going
to bother trying to make a suggestion on that. Just wanted to point out the
fallacy in the "we are anarchist" argument. NB may be "mostly anarchist",
but that still doesn't explain which laws are going to be followed
completely and which will be skirted/bent/ignored.

In general its important for a hackerspace to allow its members to chose to
violate certain laws (DMCA circumvention and other hacking projects come to
mind), but its harder to make that argument for drug use. Though personally
I'd think it would be best for noisebridge not to make an official decision
on this. But that's just my opinion.

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Brian Cloutier <briancloutier2010 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> > 2) the intoxicated people need to be physically able to leave and
> > psychologically able to comprehend that they are being asked to either
> > leave or stop use.
>
> Some of you have some very weird misconceptions about N2O.
>
> - Brian
>
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>
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